Authors at Astrodienst
Robert Hand The History of Astrology: Another View

Introduction

The material presented here originally was an introduction that
I wrote to a volume of Project
Hindsight translations called The Record of the Early Sages in
Ancient Greek. It consisted of fragments and quotations that either
were directly from the oldest sources in Middle Eastern and Western
astrology, or were paraphrases of material that derived from these
sources. At the time of the original composition of this version
of the essay there had recently been posted on alt.astrology an article
called "A Brief Introduction to the History of Astrology" which a
contained in my view large number of factual errors. Therefore I
thought it a good idea to present another view. We do not expect
everyone to accept the views presented in this paper, but the readers
should be aware that these views are close to those shared by the
majority of responsible scholars in the history of astrology. (No,
I am not calling all who disagree with these views irresponsible,
although no doubt some may be.)

Having been involved in a comprehensive program of translating ancient
texts on astrology into modern English, continuing this work with
ARHAT, I therefore believe that I have some idea of what I am talking
about even while recognizing that Western scholarship may have to
change its views (and I mine) based on what further research brings
forth.

The
Paper

The account which I present here is mostly derived from mainstream
academic sources, although I will also present some speculations
in areas where there is no clear evidence. I do not present such
speculations whimsically but only where internal evidence seems to
justify them, and always they will be presented with clear indications
that they are speculations.

On the other hand, because we have drawn from Western academic sources,
one could object that this account does not take into consideration
possible alternate views that might be derived, for example, from
the study of the astrologies of India. This might be a valid objection,
but we would like to assure the reader that we do not accept academic
positions on the history of astrology uncritically. We try to accept
only what is consistent with the internal evidence of the texts themselves.
We also recognize that what we say here is not to be taken as definitive.
There is much to be learned about the history of astrology, especially
now that it is being carefully studied by those who are not hostile
to the subject.

Based on the above considerations, it is the thesis of this author
that astrology as we know it came into being only once in time and
in one place; the place is Mesopotamia (roughly modern Iraq) and
the time is to be discussed below. Having said this, another point
needs to be made; what we mean by "astrology as we know it" is horoscopic
astrology, i.e., astrology the intention of which is the picking
of favorable times for doing things, the answering of questions,
the forecasting of mundane events, and the analysis of individual
destiny, all based on a peculiar instrument, the theme, genesis,
or birth chart. And that chart has a particular degree or sign which
is marked as the beginning point of analysis. It is usually the degree
or sign ascending, although for particular purposes the Sun, Moon,
or Lot of Fortune may be used as well.

The reason for making this very specific definition of astrology
as we know it is that in a broader sense some kind of astrology is
nearly universal among ancient peoples and is not limited to either
one time or place as its point of origin. Almost every ancient people
had some system of examining the heavens for divinatory purposes.
Native Americans, Greeks (long before they encountered Mesopotamian
astrology), the peoples of India, whoever it was that built Stonehenge
and New Grange in the British Isles, and the ancient Nordic peoples,
to give a partial list. Much of the controversy concerning the antiquity
of various peoples' astrologies stems from confusion over this very
point. The study of celestial omens does not constitute astrology
as we know it.

Mesopotamian
Origins

Mesopotamia, the "Land between the Two Rivers," is one of the so-called "cradles" of
civilization, along with Egypt, China, and the Indus Valley. It also
appears to be the oldest of these. The evidence indicates an urban
civilization as early as 4000 B.C.E. The first people in the area
were a people known as the Ubaidians. We know virtually nothing about
these people except that at a fairly early period another people
began moving into the area and intermarrying with them. These were
the Sumerians who became dominant and whose language replaced whatever
was the language of the Ubaidians. Also the Sumerians invented the
oldest known form of writing, cuneiform, which is done by impressing
wedge-shapes into soft clay.

After a period of time Semitic peoples began moving into the area
as well. The first of these were the Akkadians centered around their
city of Akkad. In about 2330 B.C.E. Sargon of Akkad conquered the
Sumerians and created the first of several Semitic empires that would
dominate not only Mesopotamia but also the Mediterranean coast and
eventually even Egypt. The language of the Akkadians was the direct
ancestor of the Assyrian and Babylonian languages, these being in
fact dialects of Akkadian.

The Akkadian Empire fell in about 2218 B.C.E. After this various
Semitic and other peoples struggled for control of the area. This
constant struggle among various peoples in fact marks the major difference
between the Mesopotamian civilization and that of Egypt. Egypt had
many centuries of relative peace with occasional periods of disturbance,
but nothing like the chaos of Mesopotamia.

After a period of time in the second millennium B.C.E. two peoples
began to assume dominance, the Babylonians who had been culturally
dominant for many centuries in the south, and the Assyrians in the
north. As it turned out, while both groups were politically dominant
at times, in general it can be said that the Assyrians were more
often politically dominant while the Babylonians were culturally
dominant. In fact the Assyrians even used the Babylonian dialect
of Akkadian for their own official records.

Here are some dates in Mesopotamian history from this point on.
All dates assume something like the modern system of chronology.
Even in modern sources these dates vary. The ones here are from the
1994 version of Microsoft's Encarta.

1792-1750 B.C.E. Hammurabi unifies the area around Babylon.

1350 B.C.E. The rise of the Assyrian Empire.

730-650 B.C.E. Assyrian Empire controls all of Mesopotamia,
parts of Persia, Syria, Palestine, and Egypt. This is also notable
as the first time that Egypt and Babylon were under the same regime.

612 B.C.E. The fall of Assyria and the rise of the Second
Babylonian Empire. The Babylonian people that brought this about
were also known as Chaldeans, hence the term Chaldean Empire.

539 B.C.E. The conquest of Babylonia by Persia. For a second
time Egypt and Babylon were under one regime.

331 B.C.E. The conquest of Mesopotamia by Alexander the Great.
The entire area becomes dominated by Greek language and culture.
The Seleucid dynasty descended from Alexander's general Seleukos
ruled the area including Mesopotamia.

126 B.C.E. The Parthians, a Persian tribe, conquered Mesopotamia.

227 C.E. The Sassanids, a people from the central area of
Persia, overthrow the Parthians and establish the Second Persian
Empire, or Sassanid Empire.

635 C.E. The Moslem Arabs overthrow the Sassanid Empire and
Mesopotamia comes under the rule of various Caliphates.

Before moving on to a discussion of how and where astrology evolved,
let us give a similar chronology for Egypt.

3200 B.C.E. First evidence of strong political forces in
the Nile basin. Also the earliest hieroglyphic writings. Evidence
of a fairly high culture in the area precedes this by several centuries.

c.2755-2255 B.C.E. The Old Kingdom. The pyramids date from
this time. The first solar calendar was developed.

c.2255-2134 B.C.E. Interregnum.

c.2134-1668 B.C.E. The Middle Kingdom.

c.1668-1570 B.C.E. The second interregnum, the period of
the Hyksos, a race of what were probably Semites dominated Egypt
during this period.

1570-1070 B.C.E. The New Kingdom. This is the period of the
Kings Amenhotep, Akhnaten, Tutankhamem, and the various kings named
Rameses. The exodus of the Israelites is widely believed to have
occurred in this period.

1070 - 671 B.C.E. The third interregnum. Various regional
dynasties ruled. In 671 B.C.E. the Assyrians conquered Egypt for
a time.

525 B.C.E. The Persians overthrew the last native ruler of
Egypt.

332 B.C.E. Alexander the Great conquered Egypt. It then came
under the rule of the Ptolemies descended from Ptolemy I, another
of Alexander's generals.

30 B.C.E. Cleopatra, the last of the Ptolemies, dies and
the Romans take over.

Subsequently Egypt fell under Arabic rule at about the same time
as the Sassanid Empire was overthrown.

Mesopotamian
Astrology First Stages

In the beginning Mesopotamian astrology was much like that of other
cultures, a simple examination of the heavens for omens that might
affect the kingdom. Often these observations of omens would include
weather phenomena intermixed with true astronomical ones. What made
the Mesopotamians different is that they began at an early time to
make systematic observations of phenomena with an eye to finding
regular patterns in the heavens that might correlate with patterns
in human events.

According to Van der Waerden (Science Awakening, Vol. II, Oxford
Univ.Press) the earliest astronomical writings known in Mesopotamia
are from the old Babylonian period, roughly the time of Hammurabi.
It is not known whether the Sumerians were involved in astronomical
studies or not, but it would seem plausible that they were. There
are also some writings which refer to the Akkadian period and which
may date from about 2300 B.C.E. Here is an example of one of these
early writings.

"If Venus appears in the East in the month Airu and the Great and
Small Twins surround her, all four of them, and she is dark, then
will the King of Elam fall sick and not remain alive."

The most extensive omen lore was contained in a compilation referred
to as Enuma Anu Enlil. These were assembled somewhere in the second
millennium B.C.E. Another collection of omens is an important work,
the dating of which is extremely controversial, the Venus Tables
of Ammizaduga. This consists of systematic observations of the phases
of Venus combined with their omen significations, the significations
being clearly based on past observations. The general belief is that
these tables date from the reign of Ammizaduga about 146 years after
Hammurabi. Based on the astronomy, van der Waerden assigns the following
years as possible dates for the observations, 1702, 1646,1638, and
1582 B.C.E. One of the reasons that these dates have become controversial
in certain circles is that if these dates are correct, then Velikovsky
is seriously in error. That controversy is outside of this scope
of this introduction however, and we will continue on the assumption
that orthodox scholarship is at least reasonably correct. Still I
urge readers to take the dates with extreme caution. The Babylonians
themselves, much like modern Hindus, attributed an antiquity to themselves
and their observations that seems fantastic by modern Western standards,
hundreds of thousands, even millions of years. Such antiquity is
not consistent with the evidence of scholarship, but we have to keep
something of an open mind. Scholars are often limited by their very
specialization with the result that one discipline, such as modern
astronomy for example, may often have powerful consequences for another
such as archeology. The work of Gerald Hawkins on Stonehenge comes
to mind. But first someone has to bring the two disciplines together.
This may yet happen in Mesopotamian studies in such a way as to radically
alter our historical understanding. Van der Waerden concludes that
the Venus tables were compiled and preserved out of motives of astral
religion, i.e., the Mesopotamians believed that the stars and planets
were associated with, or were in fact themselves the gods. Ishtar-Venus
was one of the major divinities of the Mesopotamian peoples. Many
other ancient peoples had similar notions. The Egyptians identified
the constellation of Orion with Osiris. But Osiris was a dead god
who ruled the underworld. His transportation to the heavens was very
similar to other transportations made in classical mythology. The
Mesopotamians seem to have been unique in their emphasis on the stars
and planets as being the primary indicators of divine will in the
Here and Now. This is the probable motive of the studies that led
to astrology. Over the next centuries the Mesopotamians, especially
the Babylonians, continued observing and compiling lists of phenomena
eventually getting to the point where, based on observed recurrence
cycles of the planets, they could reasonably accurately estimate
the positions of the planets at any time in the future. Ptolemy records,
and modern scholarship does not dispute this, that accurate and systematic
eclipse records were kept from 747 B.C.E. onward into the Hellenistic
period after the conquests of Alexander the Great.

An interesting question about which there is much controversy is
what kind of zodiac were the Mesopotamians using? In the earlier
material they simply recorded planets as being so many degrees from
a star.

"19 from the Moon to the Pleiades;
17 from the Pleiades to Orion;
14 from Orion to Sirius. . ."

This is de facto a sidereal observation, but it is not a zodiac!
A zodiac requires a fiducial point, a point on the circle from which
measurements are made. Also normally a zodiac has some fixed number
of regular divisions such as the twelve signs of the modern zodiacs,
the twenty-seven lunar mansions of the Hindu lunar zodiac and so
forth. But all of these early observations are like this one in using
individual stars as markers for positions.

Van der Waerden argues that the evolution of astrology went through
three phases. The first phase consists of the omen lore that we have
already described. The second phase is closely related to this but
has a zodiac in the modern sense, twelve 30-degree signs. There is
no personal horoscopy in this middle level, but great attention is
paid to the transits of Jupiter through the signs at the rate of
approximately one sign per year. From this is clearly descended the
Chinese practice of assigning each year to a zodiacal sign, and probably
also the system of annual profections in later horoscopic astrology.
There are also of course no houses of any kind. Van der Waerden dates
this middle phase as being from about 630 to 450 B.C.E. The zodiac
at this point is clearly a sidereal one and its ayanamsha is at least
close to the Fagan-Allen value.

The third phase is horoscopic astrology. Various ancient sources
mention "Chaldeans" who cast birth charts for various persons, including
Diogenes Laertius who said that according to Aristotle, a Chaldean
forecast Socrates' death from his birth chart, and that Euripides'
father also had his son's chart read getting a forecast of his brilliant
career. The reference to Chaldeans of course refers to astrologers
and makes it clear that the art in this period was completely associated
with late Babylonians, i.e., Chaldeans.

Several birth charts have been found written in cuneiform. Most
of them date from well within the Hellenistic era, but the oldest
has been dated by A. Sachs to April 29, 410 B.C. Here is the translation
as given by Fagan.

"1 Month (?) Nisan (?) night (?) of (?) the (?) 14th (?). . .
2 son of Shuma-usur, son of Shumaiddina, descendant of Deke was born.
3 At that time the Moon was below the "Horn" of the Scorpion
4 Jupiter in Pisces, Venus
5 in Taurus, Saturn in Cancer.
6 Mars in Gemini, Mercury which had set (for the last time) was (still) in
(visible).
7 . . . etc., etc."

As the reader can see this is a very rough chart with only sign
positions given, and no delineations at all. The other cuneiform
charts, though much later, are almost as terse, although positions
are given to much greater precision.

As Cyril Fagan correctly points out, the positions in the charts
also correspond more nearly to those of the sidereal zodiac using
the Fagan-Allen ayanamsha than to tropical positions.

But do we have at this point anything like the elaborate horoscopic
astrology of the later Hellenistic era? No we do not! Although academic
historians have not uncovered much concrete information about the
evolution of astrology after the early Babylonian charts, there is
considerable internal evidence for the place of origin in the earliest
texts. Many of these old texts exist in Greek. According to these
texts the birthplace of astrology as we know it is Egypt.

This would not have been a surprise to Cyril Fagan. He maintained
almost alone that Egypt had been the birthplace of horoscopic astrology.
The trouble with his theory however is that he believed that horoscopic
astrology came into being in the Egypt of the pharaohs. For this
there is very little evidence outside of Fagan's own somewhat questionable
interpretations of the evidence. It was a later Egypt that gave birth
to horoscopic astrology, an Egypt that had made close contact with
the ideas of the Babylonians.

Pharaonic Egypt had a great interest in astronomy. This is evident
in too many ways to mention. But it was the kind of astronomy that
involved stars rather than planets. The Egyptians were masters of
aligning buildings, temples and especially the pyramids to fixed
stars, apparently in an effort to bring about sympathy between terrestrial
structures and the stars with which they were associated. Their ability
to survey and align buildings with stars was incredibly accurate,
often within minutes of arc of the perfect alignment. But they do
not seem to have had any planetary theory, nor did they have the
proper mathematical techniques.

The Mesopotamians inherited the sexagesimal system of numbers from
the Sumerians, a system which used place notation in numbers much
like our modern decimal system, and which had sexagesimal fractions
very similar in kind to our decimal fractions. This enabled the Mesopotamians
to do complex computations that would have been difficult in any
other ancient system of numerical notation. The other ancient peoples
paid Mesopotamian mathematical notation the supreme compliment. They
used it whenever they had to do similar calculations of their own.
The Egyptians had nothing like it. But they did have a strong sense
of a need for terrestrial matters to be brought into synchrony with
the heavens.

The critical factor in the fusion of Egyptian ideas with Babylonian
astronomy was one or both of two historical events, the conquest
of Egypt by Persia, and the conquest of both Persia and Egypt by
Alexander the Great. On both of these occasions Egypt was brought
under the same regime as the Babylonians. In the case of the Persian
Empire, the Persians themselves became ardent devotees of astrology
which no doubt assisted the movement of astrological ideas into Egypt.

And if you were to examine the texts included in the volume on the
Sages, you would discover something that is not all obvious from
history texts that deal with astrology. The ancients clearly knew
that astrology had something to do with Babylon (after all they did
call astrologers Chaldeans) but the principle credit was given to
the Egyptians. It is customary among academics to pass this off as
something that was merely a fashion among ancient writers with no
real historical basis. And in fact the ancient writers did often
attribute astrology to persons dating back to the pharaohs such as
Nechepso and Petosiris. Nevertheless, there is no reason to assume
that the ancients were not correct as to Egypt's being the primary
source of horoscopic astrology; it was just somewhat later than they
supposed.

What did the Egyptians add to Babylonian astrology? We cannot say
for certain, but internal evidence indicates the following. The use
of a rising degree may or may not have been found in pre-Hellenistic
Babylonian astrology. But the Hellenistic writers attributed the
use of houses, or signs used as houses to Hermes. For Hermes we should
understand a reference to Hellenistic Egyptian sources. It is probable
that aspects are also Egyptian but we cannot say for certain. The
lots are almost certainly Egyptian as well as most of the systems
of rulership. Only the exaltations have a clearly Mesopotamian origin.

At any rate it is quite likely that the entire apparatus of horoscopic
astrology was in place by 1 C.E., quite possibly several centuries
earlier. One of things that we have found in our studies of the later
Greek writers is that they are already dealing with a later era of
astrology. They have their "ancients" and they have already begun
to misunderstand some of the ancient teachings. One of these writers,
Vettius Valens, actually went traveling through Egypt looking for
masters of the old traditions, much like modern Americans have gone
to India to study astrology and various sacred teachings. While most
of the Greek writers seemed to have studied from books, Valens studied
with at least a few living teachers of the old traditions. And it
is clear from his work that much of what they taught would never
have been written down but for Valens.

What
Happened Next

Whatever may have been the language of Egyptian astrology when it
first began to come into being, by 1 C.E. it was Greek. This is not
to say that there were no astrology texts written in Coptic, the
last form of ancient Egyptian, but no clear reference to any has
survived. All of the Egyptian texts that are referred to in the later
literature seem to have been written in Greek. Possibly some were
translations from Coptic.

The use of Greek had important consequences. Although the Persian
empire was a truly cosmopolitan empire with a considerable level
of equality among the races that made up the empire, no one language
came to predominate. No doubt Persian was used for official purposes,
but Babylonian and Egyptian also continued to be used in their own
areas in preference to Persian. But when Alexander the Great conquered
all of Persia and Egypt, and advanced all the way into northwest
India, Greek became the dominant language not only for official purposes,
but also for any purpose that involved communicating from one ethnic
area to another. The original languages continued to be used for
local purposes, such as Aramaic (which completely supplanted Babylonian)
and Coptic. But a scholar or traveler could go anywhere from Greece
in the west to India in the east and Egypt in the south and be understood.
Any idea expressed in Greek could have a similar range of travel.

Even after the Persian revival beginning first with the Parthians
and later with the Sassanids (see chronology given earlier), the
Bactrian peoples of what is now Afghanistan and Pakistan continued
to have Greek speaking rulers until the early centuries C.E. Consequently
the Babylonian methods embodied in Egyptian astrology as well as
the Egyptian methods themselves could travel into India without difficulty.
This accounts for the fact that all of the technical words in Indian
astrology whose origins can be found in another language are Greek,
not Babylonian, not Coptic, nor earlier Egyptian. What is also interesting
is that there appear to be few, if any, technical words in Greek
astrology that have their origins in any other language.

Below is a partial list of some of the terms in Hindu astrology
that appear to have a Greek origin.

Table 1. Zodiacal Signs

Sanskrit

Greek

English

Sanskrit

Greek

English

Kriya

Krios

Aries

Juka

Zugos

Libra

Tavura

Taurus

Taurus

Kaurpi

Skorpios

Scorpio

Jituma

Didumoi

Gemini

Taukshika

Toxotes

Sagittarius

Kulira

Karkinos

Cancer

Akokera

Aigokeres

Capricorn

Leya

Leon

Leo

Hridroga

Hudrochoos

Aquarius

Pathona

Parthenos

Virgo

Chettha

Ichthues

Pisces

Table 2. Planets

Sanskrit

Greek

English

Sanskrit

Greek

English

Hermnan

Hermes

Mercury

Ara

Ares

Mars

Asphujit

Aphrodite

Venus

Jeeva

Zeus

Jove

Heli

Helios

Sun

Kona

Kronos

Saturn

All of the above had Sanskrit equivalents which probably preceded the introduction
of the above words into India, and which also eventually completely displaced
these words of Hellenic origin. The following are terms for which there are
no previous Sanskrit roots and appear to have come completely from Greek.
These words have remained standard astrological terms in India to this day.

Table 3. House and Aspect Words

Sanskrit

Greek

English

Sanskrit

Greek

English

Hora

Hora

Hour

Kendra

Kentron

Angle

Liptaka

Lepta

Minute

Panaphara

Epanaphora

Succedent

Hiptaka

Hupogeion

Imum Coeli

Apoklima

Apoklima

Cadent

Jamitra

Diametros

Diameter

Drekana

Dekanos

Decan

Mesurana

Mesoura-nema

Midheaven

Sunapha

Sunaphe

Applying

Menyaiva

Meniaios

No Equiv.

Anaphara

Anaphora

Separating

Trikona

Trigonon

Trine

Dauradhura

Doruphoria

Doryphory

Dyuna

Dunon

Setting

Kemadruma

Kenodromia

[Void of Course]

As the heading at the top of Table 3 indicates, these are all house
and aspect words, indicating that this was an area of Hindu astrology
on which Hellenistic astrology had great impact. The question of
the debt or lack thereof of Hindu astrology to Hellenistic is an
extremely controversial one. Many authors of the Hindu school would
like to deny that there was any at all. This position is a bit hard
to support given the above, and also given the very frequent references
to the "Yavanas" who were Greeks or more precisely Greek speaking
persons of various ethnic extractions.

On the other hand there are Westerners, of whom this author is not
one, who believe that Hindu astrology comes entirely from the West
(or more precisely Middle East). David Pingree in his study of the
Yavanajataka does an extremely thorough job of cataloging the parallels
between the astrology of that work and that of the Greeks, and even
he is forced to admit that there are many differences. However such
differences do not require two different origins. All it requires
is a period of isolation between two branches of a tradition after
an earlier period of unity, such that the two branches can diverge,
and one, the eastern, merge with native traditions already in place.
While we do not insist that Hindu astrology is entirely or even principally
an offshoot of Hellenistic astrology, it must be said that the required
period of isolation did occur which could have caused a single tradition
to become two.

After 126 B.C.E. the Parthians, a Persian people, rose up against
the Seleucids who succeeded Alexander the Great, and they re-conquered
most of the old Persian Empire except for the portion near the Mediterranean,
and the portion in the northwest of India. The Parthians were extremely
hostile to the Greeks (and later the Romans) and effectively cut
off communication (or at least cut it down to a trickle) between
the main body of Hellenistic peoples toward the West and the Bactrian
Greeks in Afghanistan and Pakistan, who in turn remained in power
until the early centuries C.E. The Bactrian Greeks eventually converted
to Hinduism and their language disappeared. However as of about 200
C.E. they still existed as an identifiable group. These are the Yavanas
of the Yavanajataka.

Still later the historian Kay mentions Hindu records from the 4th
and 5th Centuries C.E. of a new Sun God cult coming in from the West.
Given that Christianity displaced the worship of Sol Invictus, the
Unconquered Sun, it is tempting to postulate that Hindu astrology
received a second burst of input from a new group of Yavanas fleeing
Christian persecution in the West.

The central problem is how much of Hindu astrology is indigenous
and how much comes from the West. Other than the few suggestions
I have made here, this is not the place to attempt an answer. In
any case it is very clear that whatever the Hindus got from the West
they did not just take and passively apply. They altered, modified,
and quite possibly improved whatever they may have received from
the West and combined it with their own native traditions.

There is one other consequence of the Parthian separation. The Persian
peoples had always been enthusiastic astrologers. It seems logical
to conclude that they must have developed their own traditions from
the astrology that they had inherited from the Mesopotamians and
the Greeks. Then in 227 C.E. they were overthrown by the Sassanid
Persians who would have continued the development of the Persian
traditions of astrology. Unfortunately when the Arabs came, almost
all of the literature of the Zoroastrian Sassanids was destroyed.
This includes their astrological works. However we do have a strong
clue as to what their astrology must have been like. Most of the
greatest astrologers in the Arab era were Persians! And the astrology
they taught is quite different from both the Hindu and the Greek.
It had orbs of aspect, the Great Cycles of Jupiter and Saturn, all
of the elaborate systems of planetary interactions such as Refrenation,
Frustration, Abscission of Light, Translation of Light and so forth.
While Arab era astrology clearly owes a large debt to Hellenistic
astrology, it is also clear that in the two or three centuries between
the last known Hellenistic astrologers and the first known Arab era
ones, something new had come into the stream. This could have been,
and probably was the Persian stream of astrology. And Arab era astrology
is the immediate ancestor of the Western astrology of today. Our
astrology may be in fact the successor to that third stream of ancient
astrologies.

A
Final Note on Zodiacs

We have mentioned previously in this essay that the first Babylonian
birth charts were cast in the sidereal zodiac. (See our article On
the Invariance of the Tropical Zodiac). Also it has been traditional
for Hindu astrologers to use one or another sidereal zodiac. This
whole matter is as controversial as the issue of the indebtedness
or lack thereof of Hindu astrology to Middle Eastern astrology. But
there is not enough space in this essay to go into the matter at
this time. In previous writings (in Project
Hindsight) we have stated that the zodiac did not seem to be
an issue of great import to the ancients. We still hold that position.
But at some point in a future introductory essay we will go into
that matter in some depth. For the moment it will have to suffice
to say that the matter is far from closed in favor of either zodiac.

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